Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/75

 Rh war and other troubles affecting the country, that they varied by ten degrees, and all dealings with foreign markets were affected by this fact. On the whole, however, prices ruled very low.

Here I must parenthetically explain the monetary system of the country. The unit then, as now, was the rouble (from roubit, to cut), and each rouble consisted of 100 kopecks. Now, this rouble was supposed to weigh 16 silver zolotniki, weighed, therefore, in precious metal, almost seven times as much as the rouble of the present day, and was reckoned by the English merchants to be worth 16s. 8d. of English money. But after the fifteenth century especially this value suffered a gradual depreciation, resulting from the Muscovite policy, which was even then inaugurating a system the consequence of which now appears to us in a rouble which has fallen to the value of two shillings and a few odd pence. The kopiéïki were originally called diéngi (from the Tartar word ding, money), the present name not having been adopted till towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when these small coins were stamped with the figure of a warrior with a lance (kopié). Even under the father of Ivan the Terrible, the idea of cutting up the rouble into 250 diéngi had been adopted, and, under the pressure of financial necessity, during Ivan's minority, this number was increased to 300. There were two sorts of roubles at that period, for the Novgorod rouble still retained its original weight, and was worth twice as much as the Moscow rouble. This makes it very difficult to calculate the price of food-stuffs from any document of the period.

The small change of the country also included altiny (from the Tartar word alt, six), six-kopeck pieces; grivny, twenty-kopeck pieces; poltiny, or half-roubles (poltiny, half); and copper coins called poloudiéngi or pouli (half-kopecks). The silver diénga, an irregularly-shaped, rather oval coin, borrowed from the Tartars, was so small that it was easily lost. Shop-keepers settling their accounts generally put them in their mouths, fifty at a time. According to several foreign travellers, such as Herberstein and Fletcher and the chroniclers of the period, and according, too, to the calculations of Monsieur Rojkov (loc. cit., p. 202, etc.), the average price of the tchetviért of rye (25 bushels—the tchetviért of those days was half that size) varied, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, between 10 kopecks, the lowest, and 69 kopecks, a high, price. And all other produce was subject to the same fluctuations. This, as compared with present prices, makes an average of 93.9, and we may conclude the purchasing power of the rouble of that day to have been ninety-four times greater, and its value therefore ninety-four times higher, than that of the rouble of ours,